A major objective in environmental protection is to minimize the emission of harmful substances. Sulfur dioxide (SO.sub.2) produced in combustion processes of mineral oil products such as heating oil, gasoline, diesel fuel, heating gas has a substantial fraction of harmful substance emission. To limit these emissions, fuels having the lowest possible sulfur content must be employed. For this purpose, these fuels must be constantly examined according to a quick and sensitive analysis process for their total sulfur content.
The combustion according to Wickbold is used as standard analysis process. This analysis method is described in DIN-EN 41. This method requires considerable chemical-apparative expense. The duration of several hours for a single analysis is a great disadvantage, in particular, rechecking the analysis is expensive and technically not interesting since the process parameters may have changed in the long interim time following the analysis-taking. Monitoring and controlling the reaction processes in petro-chemical plants by determining the total sulfur content is, therefore, not possible.